07.31.11

14th Amendment and Obama’s liberal dupes

Posted in General at 12:24 pm by nemo

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/30/congressman-pelosi-clearly-backs-14th-amendment-in-debt-standoff_n_914137.html

I am shocked that Obama has exposed himself as a total non-liberal in this deficit debate. Despite his denials, it is clear, and has been for a long time, that all this is totally unnecessary, and that Obama could have simply called it off. The legal question is not that murky, so the suspicion falls on Obama here.
There is no basis for letting the right hijack politics to extend a debt ceiling.
Unless, of course, he is a closet ‘Republican’ who wishes to let the right stage its kabuki theatre.

Suspicion grows that the cleverest way to stage a rightist coup was to use a person like the closet-conservative Obama to con the liberal public into a corner. He is passing a point of no return, but perhaps this was computed from the start, ‘where will they go’, as that gangster Rahm Emmanuel said.
Obama must be playing chicken with the liberal public: he can push them almost at will, in fear before the worse possibility.
Obama, as Tarpley seems to have warned, is an agent of the Wall Street faction, and his nimble deception has so far worked perfectly to befuddle his liberal dupes.

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Fall of the Neanderthals

Posted in Evolution at 12:19 pm by nemo

Fall of the Neanderthals: Volume of Modern Humans Infiltrating Europe Cited as Critical Factor
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2011) — New research sheds light on why, after 300,000 years of domination, European Neanderthals abruptly disappeared. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have discovered that modern humans coming from Africa swarmed the region, arriving with over ten times the population as the Neanderthal inhabitants.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110728144928.htm

Read the rest of this entry »

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Axial Ages, and punctuated equilibria

Posted in General at 12:18 pm by nemo

Punctuated Equilibrium

Followers of the sage of an age of revelation are confused by their own mythology. But the ‘secular’ rejection of the whole corpus of history is also misleading. The Axial Age phenomenon, as an exhibit of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (to use the words as dictionary items, not in Gould’s rendering), is far better than the god delusions that have been foisted on the data.

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The Old Testament era in the Axial Age

Posted in General at 12:15 pm by nemo

http://history-and-
evolution.com/whee4th/intro1_2.htm: Universal Histories: The Old Testament Enigma.
We will delay our Sunday ‘spring through WHEE’ for mid-week. But we connect with our discussion of Judaism with this essay/chapter on the Old Testament period in the Axial Age, which was misperceived by the Israelites as the action of god in history. It was simply the Axial Age in action.

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New Age civilizations, etc…

Posted in General at 12:09 pm by nemo

Richard comment
Richard, you give yourself away by citing Charles Murray. You should know better than to trust this kind of paid conservative propagandist. You are right that people are so paranoid of this question they can ignore a small tally of valid points from the likes of Murray. But in the final analysis the whole analysis is flawed.

I think I can show the way past this by showing how the emergence of civilization was larger than its particular groups and their intelligence. The point is decisive. You cannot say that ‘smarter’ people created higher civilization.
The sad reality is that man as he is, however intelligent, was not capable of creating civilization by himself. A larger process is clearly at work. So your comparative judgments are false.

The question of New World civilizations is fascianting, and complex. We don’t know to what degree diffusion is involved. The evidence has always pointed toward diffusion, even as mainstream scholars denied it.
The case for diffusion has won out, I think, in recent years. We can discuss that further here later.

The New World civilizations are enigmatic, and the Mayans, we should note, are correlated with the Axial Age. But we can’t close the case.
We should point out that the whole thing, as elsewhere, went into decline, and it is hardly coincidence the Mayans collapsed just as the Old World Dark Ages began (???!). The later Aztecs, we cannot forget, corrupted their culture with human sacrifice and were destroyed on the spot by the aggressive Christian monopoly, which, at least, was beyond that stage. So the evidence here is mixed. I will pass on this. It needs close discussion. But Aztecs were missing some major marbles. Human sacrifice is not a stage of civilization.

The question of intelligence, then, is not the same as that of the energistic of innovation in civilizations. The smartest people have given themselves away in our own time: they are to a large extent all on Wall Street (so to speak) trying to create a new aristocracy. That idiocy again.
I think that it should be obvious that if an entire science cadre of smart people can’t see through Darwinism, then science intelligence is open to question.

Richard
207.138.47.153 Submitted on 2011/07/30 at 12:19 pm
“you will see that Europeans were long delayed in creating ‘higher civilization’.”

I wasn’t referring to just Europeans…I was referring to Eurasians which includes the people from Portugal to East Asia. These civilizations are, no doubt, different in the the specifics, but there is still a commonality between them in including them in the “higher civilizations.”

“Note this point,
the almost impossible to develop Sub-Sahara was in fact developed into a Neolithic state by West Africans.”

One could also say the same thing about Meso America and yet the people were able to create some rather impressive civilizations in isolation (they were still of Eurasian stock.

“Issues of intelligence are highly misleading, and can’t be relied on.”

I think the people who create IQ tests would be the first to admit that they aren’t the end all and be all (I’m not trying to defend Charles Murray, but he makes this point again and again. His critics never seem to pick up on the nuances in his arguments). Yet, in the final analysis, there does seem to be some direct correlation between abilities in abstract thought, etc. and success on IQ tests.

“you will see that Europeans were long delayed in creating ‘higher civilization’.”

I wasn’t referring to just Europeans…I was referring to Eurasians which includes the people from Portugal to East Asia. These civilizations are, no doubt, different in the the specifics, but there is still a commonality between them in including them in the “higher civilizations.”

“Note this point,
the almost impossible to develop Sub-Sahara was in fact developed into a Neolithic state by West Africans.”

One could also say the same thing about Meso America and yet the people were able to create some rather impressive civilizations in isolation (they were still of Eurasian stock.

“Issues of intelligence are highly misleading, and can’t be relied on.”

I think the people who create IQ tests would be the first to admit that they aren’t the end all and be all (I’m not trying to defend Charles Murray, but he makes this point again and again. His critics never seem to pick up on the nuances in his arguments). Yet, in the final analysis, there does seem to be some direct correlation between abilities in abstract thought, etc. and success on IQ tests.
rmbr117@yahoo.com
Richard

1

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Repost: Civilization and intelligence

Posted in General at 11:53 am by nemo

(See comments quoted at end of post)

Richard, you are being dangerously racist in your remarks, but since the issue seems to lurk in the back of people’s minds I will answer to it. But, my views apart, a host of critics have warned of ‘IQ’ thinking. It can play you false. Much IQ thinking is remarkably unintelligent! You have actually dismissed your own question by using the term ‘Eurasian’. That is not a well defined category. The question of Africa is totally misleading: the various African tribal sectors beginning in West Africa spread ‘higher neolithic’ civilization to the whole sub-sahara. So what is your statement? There are aspects to that culture that others have lost. I think that, for sure, Africa is a special case, because its climate makes many things very difficult, close to impossible, so it is exempt from standard judgments. The disease factor alone shows the real miracle of the Bantu colonization of the sub-sahara. Consider what later explorers found, in the way most African travelers were simply wiped out withing weeks. We can see that diffusion into Africa was virtually non-existent.
Thus the achievements of ‘higher civilization’ in its neolithic minimum are clearly present throughout Africa, and were so before the arrival of colonialists. What else can I say? Africans at all points are at the stage of post-hunter gatherer farming culture. Unlike the San, who just might be actually much smarter, but seem incapable of higher civilizational adaptation. I should note the strong suspicion that New World civilization was in part the creation of Africans, as the stone monoliths of Central America suggest. More generally, the case for diffusion to the New World is strong,despite scholarly prejudice against that idea (now waning).
These questions are relative, and dynamic. In a few generations intelligence emerges in those who seemed to lack it. In fact, I think that we all tend to suffer intelligence in decline. As with the San some of the first men were super smart in a way that went into decline later.

I think that the assumptions re: IQ have resulted in great confusion. So-called ‘higher’ civilization was not created by people with the ‘highest IQ’s’. A close study of the facts shows that the mainline of innovations follows its own logic, and if the people in the mainline are less smart, the higher logic adjusts, but proceeds irregardless. Second, intelligence is a function of situations lived. Those who created higher civilization had a response to that in the form of transforming intelligence. So the issue is dynamic.
The illusion of Western Eurocentric civlization is great: but a reasonable analysis shows that Europe was retarded until very late in the game. While Egypt/Sumer created higher civilization Europeans were still building Neolithic megaliths. The European modernity was the result of long, long gestation, almost two thousand years. You should consider the case of Tacitus’ Germania (the object of a recent new book, check Amazon), and the appearance of being primitive or unintelligent from the perspective of the Romans of that era.
All these judgments are mostly hopeless.

It is important to study the eonic effect: higher civilization shows a teleological emergence that transcends its exemplars and creators, who were supercharged briefly to perform the work.

If you think the smartest people automatically advance civilization, consider contemporary Jewish culture, currently filled with some of the smartest people. Actually, as such Jews become more dominant in an anti-antii-semitic culture the result is mostly technical achievement, and economic performance. The general culture is actually in decline even as ‘smarter’ people flood the meritocratic ranks. So why is that? All the achievements of the early modern were created by the supposedly less intelligent Europeans. Part of the problem is, of course, the self-isolation of Jewish culture: all achievements (unless you are a Marx adamant about assimilation) become Jewish achievements, and tend to fall by the wayside, unless they are for that reason centered around science, or technical subjects. This feature of Jewish culture has, sadly, crippled Jewish culture. The whole point of the Xtian sausage machine was to make all contributions universal ones.
What actually created higher civilization (assuming there is such a thing)? The eonic effect shows that almost all the great advances in civilization spring from the key hotspots of the eonic sequence. They are thus more than creative achievements, or the action of high IQ.
Sorry, but the facts speak for themselves.
The problem can be understood by looking at economies. Very smart people have an edge in economic function, and tend to pull ahead statistically. That fact leads to endless misunderstanding and prejudice.
But that only shows immersion in the mechanics of economies. Those so immersed show very little meta-intelligence (as Marx desperately tried to warn) about the circumstance they find themselves in. So it is easy to turn high IQ into economic exploitation, not so easy to intelligently transcend the hypnotic effect of market immersion, etc…
Frankly, I think that too much market culture must have made everyone stupider. It looks that way if you examine the TV mentality that has come into existence. Markets tend to make people stupid to make them ‘buy’: look at television ads over a few hours. They assume stupidity, and seem to enforce it.

There is a lot more to say here, but in general, we see a related confusion in Nietzsche, who deftly and slyly adopted a variant of your perspective: his superior ‘barbarians’ are perhaps really the Aryans, thought to be the vanguard of human civilization, for some crackpot reason. They aren’t and they weren’t. Here it is precisely the effect of the Axial Age that found Indo-Europeans in its manline, that shot them out of the cannon for some brilliant acheivements. Ditto for the Israelites, who, I suspect, were not so intelligent, but were also shot out of a cannon to perform a particular task of ‘higher civilzation’.
In general the standard measures of IQ are, as noted repeatedly, dangerous measures and result in all sorts of misleading conclusions.

Richard said,
July 29, 2011 at 7:15 am ·I have no intention of igniting something controversial, but I think there is an obvious and speculative question: Was this genetic factor instrumental in giving Eurasians the decisive edge in intelligence needed to create the “higher civilizations”?

nemo said,

July 30, 2011 at 5:57 am · Edit

I think you should study the eonic effect: you will see that Europeans were long delayed in creating ‘higher civilization’.
And the case of Africa is clear: it enters ‘higher civilization’ with the Neolithic and the spread of various peoples (e.g. Bantu)
throughout the continent formerly dominated by (highly intelligent!) hunter-gatherers (the San). Note this point,
the almost impossible to develop Sub-Sahara was in fact developed into a Neolithic state by West Africans.
In general, all the great advances of civilization show direct correlation with the eonic data.
Issues of intelligence are highly misleading, and can’t be relied on.

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Judaism vs Xtianity: what does the ‘eonic effect’ suggest?

Posted in General at 11:46 am by nemo

http://darwiniana.com/2011/07/31/was-judaism-a-mistake/
The previous post raises a controversial issue, in one form a staple of old-fashioned anti-semites, but the questions won’t go away.
That said, as we study the ‘eonic effect’, we wonder, what does that tell us here?
The answer is, actually, that the data is neutral, and shows clearly the three stepping stones toward monotheistic religion, the early Israelite phase, the Christian and Moslem secondary and tertiary phases, but it also shows the way that the Axial period produced, with the Israelites, a bargain with their tribalism, to create an early form of monotheistic state theocracy in a people too primitive to conceive of a supra-tribal religion. It was that phase, with all the dangers of getting stalled, and with all the momentum of the Axial Age dyinamic expended at the embryonic beginning, that set the seeds of the tragic confusions to come.
We should note a similar, but not so disastrous, analog in the relation of Hinayana to Mahayana buddhism in India.
The problem here is that the eonic effect points to something teleological, even as it gives no final evidence for that. To say that Israelitism was a phase toward a universal monotheism is a kind of teleological projection, but as we stand back we see that it must have been so. But the tragedy was almost unavoidable here, given the fixation of the early Israelitism.
The confused perception of the Axial Age by the Isrealites, that ‘god’ had chosen them specially, was a misreading of the extraordinary situation in which they found themselves, an infantile reading, let it be said, and the result was a kind of dead baby. We see that from within the immense potency of the post-Exilic situation, the next stage appeared as if from nowhere, and we see the teleological drama unfold, but the result was equally an immense tragedy.
In any case, I expound on the eonic effect, and express my own opinions, but the two are not the same. We need to examine the data here from a new perspective to try and ‘dubug’ the flawed programmatic. And then move on.

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Was Judaism a mistake?

Posted in General at 10:46 am by nemo

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/rabbi-wolpe-defends-animal-sacrifice/
We commented on this disgusting Huffpost article by Rabbi Wolpe on animal sacrifice last week (check the archives).
It is time to read the riot act to Jews, respectfully, without antisemitism, and with a studied indifference to a problem that is likely to solve itself as Judaism disperses in the wind (I won’t bet on it, however). The new atheists often attack ‘religion’, but they really mean Xtianity, and the suspicion in some cases is that the traditional revulsion and total Jewish hatred of Xtianity is present in disguise.
I think that one idea for the new atheists, who should be consistent in their stance, is to expose the frozen character of primitive pre-Judaism, to see that, in relation to the sources in the Axial Age, Israelite ‘proto-Judaism’, was an emergent process in evolution toward a universal religion, but became stalled around covenental Judaism, so called. And animal sacrifice was one of the archaic monstrosities that Xtians rapidly discarded.
The question remains, and this is a pure slap in the face for Jews (I really don’t much care), was Judaism simply a mistake, something that should never have happened? Xtians, whose views I don’t exactly trust, always thought so, and the hopeless situation of producing two religions was a tragedy that the new atheists are too chicken to even discuss in their tactics of generalized ‘anti-religion’.
I don’t wish particularly to pursue such an unpromising subject, but if Rabbi Wolpe is actually dumb enough to repropose animal sacrifice at this late date it is a sign of what might happen in an anti-anti-semitic age, and I think it is time to ask intelligent Jews (no need, they have already done so) to discard Judaism and move on. I have a worse opinion of Xtians in many ways, but the whole idea of Judaism was surely a confusion of scale as the momentum of emerging entities lost control of itself. The result, two religions, in permanent collision over two thousand years should be a strong warning, amplified to thundering proportions by the fact of the Holocaust, that we should move on, and try to create a new religious perspective altogether.
This issue is one that should be raised by outsiders, since insiders are too fanatically involved to resolve the questions, and then ditched, as one packs one’s bags to skip town confronted by irate Xtian idiots and thumb-sucking Jewish primitives (“I have a special relation to god, unlike those dumb Gentiles”), to move toward a post-Axial Age monotheism and its stragglers.
Again, I really don’t care here, but can see that a non-Xtian and non-Jew has to intervene here, to beat both parties over the head, in vain no doubt. I hold no brief for Xtianity, but their insistence that covenental judaism was a transient phase that should be phased out, and which led to escalating anti-semitism, was nonetheless the only sane stance to adopt, at least at the beginning.
I would have to say it, the devil won the sweepstakes here (I don’t believe in the devil, not at all, except when it comes to asking why religions failed), and the result was a pathetic monstrosity of Jewish-Xtianity that tormented its confused followers for centuries, with no resolution.
Islam emerged finally as a desperate effort to try again, to reset the whole question, but the result didnt’ succeed with Jews and Xtians.
It is not necessary to embrace atheism here, but there is a need to move on, and that means post-Xtianity, ditching the grotesque covenental Judaism as the vampire it is, and demanding jewish assimilation.
Best of luck of course, and this demonic masterpiece will persist for a few more centuries, but finally it will all be swept away, as were all the pre-Axial Age religions.
Let us be wary of the the dangers of renewal given the blessings of closing the past.

Here’s a rabbi who should have held his tongue. It’s David Wolpe, whom we’ve encountered several times before. Over at HuffPo he writes “In defense of animal sacrifice.” (HuffPo notes at the bottom: “The title of this piece has been updated from ‘Why Animal Sacrifice is Good’ to ‘In Defense of Animal Sacrifice’ to more accurately reflect the views of the author.”)

Why would a liberal and sophisticated rabbi defend the wanton killing of beasts to propitiate a God in whom that rabbi barely believes? (Note: Wolpe is also a vegetarian.)

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Berlinski book

Posted in General at 10:36 am by nemo

http://www.uncommondescent.com/mathematics/numbers-point-to-something-beyond-themselves-but-what/

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Evidence for ‘god’?

Posted in General at 10:35 am by nemo

There can be no evidence for God (revisited)
By STEVE ZARA
Added: Saturday, 30 July 2011 at 1:46 PM

http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/642394-there-can-be-no-evidence-for-god-revisited

With time, some arguments can become simpler. I’m optimistic that this is the case with arguments I put forward last year on the subjects of theism and the supernatural, and so it’s worth re-examining them, or at least one proposition that really matters:

There can be no evidence for God

This statement is actually false until you define what you mean by god. By some definitions there is a ton of evidence.
For myself, most definitions will fail, so the issue is neutral.

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Dawkins’ fraudulent ‘rebuttal’ of Hoyle

Posted in Evolution at 10:31 am by nemo

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/07/expose-on-richard-dawkins%E2%80%99-the-god-delusion-3/

This article shows how Dawkins has been able to confuse people. indeed, pull the wool over their eyes. As here, with the ridiculous claim that Dawkins answered Hoyle.

He referred to the astronomer, Fred Hoyle’s Boeing 474 argument in which Hoyle suggested that the probability of life originating on earth by pure chance is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747. Creationists such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses fallaciously argue repeatedly ad nauseam that in order to explain incredibly complex entities, appeal to chance or to creative design are the only available options.

But the Boeing 474 and kindred creationist arguments lose their plausibility after Dawkins showed that the real alternative to design is natural selection, the linchpin of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

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Organized Crime Is Wiping out Wildlife

Posted in General at 10:28 am by nemo

Organized Crime Is Wiping out Wildlife, Report FindsScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — A paper by WCS conservationist Elizabeth Bennett says that an immense, increasingly sophisticated illegal trade in wildlife parts conducted by organized crime, coupled with antiquated enforcement methods, are decimating the world’s most beloved species including rhinos, tigers, and elephants on a scale never before seen.

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How Bats Stay On Target

Posted in Evolution at 10:26 am by nemo

How Bats Stay On Target Despite the ClutterScienceDaily (July 30, 2011) — In a paper published this week in Science, researchers at Brown University and from the Republic of Georgia have learned how bats can home in on a target, while nearly instantaneously taking account of and dismissing other objects in their midst. The trick lies in their neurons: Bats can separate the cavalcade of echoes returning from their sonar pulses by distinguishing changes in amplitude — the intensity of the sound — between different parts of each echo within 1.5 decibels, to decide whether the object is a target or just background clutter.

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Algae

Posted in global warming at 10:24 am by nemo

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,776653,00.html

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Too Close to the Field

Posted in General at 10:19 am by nemo

Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Mainstream Reporters: Too Close to the Field and Teams to Get the Debt Story
by Jeff Cohen

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/30

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Obamamania

Posted in General at 10:17 am by nemo

Published on Saturday, July 30, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Time to Reset Our Moral Compass
by Norman Mathews

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/30-2

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Who’s Grabbing Africa’s Land?

Posted in General at 10:15 am by nemo

Published on Sunday, July 31, 2011 by Colorlines
Who’s Grabbing Africa’s Land? U.S. Speculators, Including Universities
by Michelle Chen

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/31-1

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“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”

Posted in General at 10:14 am by nemo

Published on Sunday, July 31, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
We Must Destroy the Government in Order to Save It

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/31

by Robert Freeman
A certain, macabre phrase came to personify the Vietnam War: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The colonel who uttered it was doubtless oblivious to both the psychotic irony and the larger surreal symbolism that the phrase represented. Savage destruction was perfectly consonant with ideologically-intended salvation, just so long as both were issued by the same sanctimonious American official. Indeed, in some perverse medieval rendering of modern imperial justice, salvation could only be achieved through destruction.

The phrase might just as well be a rallying cry for the Tea Party Republicans and their holy jihad against government and the cooperative society that government represents: they must destroy it in order to save it. For that is unquestionably what the debt ceiling debacle is really about.

Let’s dispense once and for all with the fiction that the debt ceiling debate is anything but a contrivance to destroy government and the shared aspirations to civility that government represents.

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Marching to Brussels

Posted in General at 10:10 am by nemo

Published on Sunday, July 31, 2011 by the Inter Press Service
“Indignant” Demonstrators Marching to Brussels to Protest Effects of Crisis

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/07/31-1

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07.30.11

A transcultural mainline in world history

Posted in General at 1:31 pm by nemo

Climbing Mt Improbable

Our discussions of civilization and intelligence today demand a renewed focus on the eonic effect and what it tells us: we see an overwhelming correlation with creative advance in the mainline shown by the eonic sequence. Complete with medieval periods in between.
It is important to follow the evidence here, to see that the effect is greater than that of the cultures involved.

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Civilization and intelligence

Posted in General at 12:48 pm by nemo

(See comments quoted at end of post)

Richard, you are being dangerously racist in your remarks, but since the issue seems to lurk in the back of people’s minds I will answer to it. But, my views apart, a host of critics have warned of ‘IQ’ thinking. It can play you false. Much IQ thinking is remarkably unintelligent! You have actually dismissed your own question by using the term ‘Eurasian’. That is not a well defined category. The question of Africa is totally misleading: the various African tribal sectors beginning in West Africa spread ‘higher neolithic’ civilization to the whole sub-sahara. So what is your statement? There are aspects to that culture that others have lost. I think that, for sure, Africa is a special case, because its climate makes many things very difficult, close to impossible, so it is exempt from standard judgments. The disease factor alone shows the real miracle of the Bantu colonization of the sub-sahara. Consider what later explorers found, in the way most African travelers were simply wiped out withing weeks. We can see that diffusion into Africa was virtually non-existent.
Thus the achievements of ‘higher civilization’ in its neolithic minimum are clearly present throughout Africa, and were so before the arrival of colonialists. What else can I say? Africans at all points are at the stage of post-hunter gatherer farming culture. Unlike the San, who just might be actually much smarter, but seem incapable of higher civilizational adaptation. I should note the strong suspicion that New World civilization was in part the creation of Africans, as the stone monoliths of Central America suggest. More generally, the case for diffusion to the New World is strong,despite scholarly prejudice against that idea (now waning).
These questions are relative, and dynamic. In a few generations intelligence emerges in those who seemed to lack it. In fact, I think that we all tend to suffer intelligence in decline. As with the San some of the first men were super smart in a way that went into decline later.

I think that the assumptions re: IQ have resulted in great confusion. So-called ‘higher’ civilization was not created by people with the ‘highest IQ’s’. A close study of the facts shows that the mainline of innovations follows its own logic, and if the people in the mainline are less smart, the higher logic adjusts, but proceeds irregardless. Second, intelligence is a function of situations lived. Those who created higher civilization had a response to that in the form of transforming intelligence. So the issue is dynamic.
The illusion of Western Eurocentric civlization is great: but a reasonable analysis shows that Europe was retarded until very late in the game. While Egypt/Sumer created higher civilization Europeans were still building Neolithic megaliths. The European modernity was the result of long, long gestation, almost two thousand years. You should consider the case of Tacitus’ Germania (the object of a recent new book, check Amazon), and the appearance of being primitive or unintelligent from the perspective of the Romans of that era.
All these judgments are mostly hopeless.

It is important to study the eonic effect: higher civilization shows a teleological emergence that transcends its exemplars and creators, who were supercharged briefly to perform the work.

If you think the smartest people automatically advance civilization, consider contemporary Jewish culture, currently filled with some of the smartest people. Actually, as such Jews become more dominant in an anti-antii-semitic culture the result is mostly technical achievement, and economic performance. The general culture is actually in decline even as ‘smarter’ people flood the meritocratic ranks. So why is that? All the achievements of the early modern were created by the supposedly less intelligent Europeans. Part of the problem is, of course, the self-isolation of Jewish culture: all achievements (unless you are a Marx adamant about assimilation) become Jewish achievements, and tend to fall by the wayside, unless they are for that reason centered around science, or technical subjects. This feature of Jewish culture has, sadly, crippled Jewish culture. The whole point of the Xtian sausage machine was to make all contributions universal ones.
What actually created higher civilization (assuming there is such a thing)? The eonic effect shows that almost all the great advances in civilization spring from the key hotspots of the eonic sequence. They are thus more than creative achievements, or the action of high IQ.
Sorry, but the facts speak for themselves.
The problem can be understood by looking at economies. Very smart people have an edge in economic function, and tend to pull ahead statistically. That fact leads to endless misunderstanding and prejudice.
But that only shows immersion in the mechanics of economies. Those so immersed show very little meta-intelligence (as Marx desperately tried to warn) about the circumstance they find themselves in. So it is easy to turn high IQ into economic exploitation, not so easy to intelligently transcend the hypnotic effect of market immersion, etc…
Frankly, I think that too much market culture must have made everyone stupider. It looks that way if you examine the TV mentality that has come into existence. Markets tend to make people stupid to make them ‘buy’: look at television ads over a few hours. They assume stupidity, and seem to enforce it.

There is a lot more to say here, but in general, we see a related confusion in Nietzsche, who deftly and slyly adopted a variant of your perspective: his superior ‘barbarians’ are perhaps really the Aryans, thought to be the vanguard of human civilization, for some crackpot reason. They aren’t and they weren’t. Here it is precisely the effect of the Axial Age that found Indo-Europeans in its manline, that shot them out of the cannon for some brilliant acheivements. Ditto for the Israelites, who, I suspect, were not so intelligent, but were also shot out of a cannon to perform a particular task of ‘higher civilzation’.
In general the standard measures of IQ are, as noted repeatedly, dangerous measures and result in all sorts of misleading conclusions.

Richard said,
July 29, 2011 at 7:15 am ·I have no intention of igniting something controversial, but I think there is an obvious and speculative question: Was this genetic factor instrumental in giving Eurasians the decisive edge in intelligence needed to create the “higher civilizations”?

nemo said,

July 30, 2011 at 5:57 am · Edit

I think you should study the eonic effect: you will see that Europeans were long delayed in creating ‘higher civilization’.
And the case of Africa is clear: it enters ‘higher civilization’ with the Neolithic and the spread of various peoples (e.g. Bantu)
throughout the continent formerly dominated by (highly intelligent!) hunter-gatherers (the San). Note this point,
the almost impossible to develop Sub-Sahara was in fact developed into a Neolithic state by West Africans.
In general, all the great advances of civilization show direct correlation with the eonic data.
Issues of intelligence are highly misleading, and can’t be relied on.

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Buddhism and revolution

Posted in General at 12:01 pm by nemo

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/the-karmapa-tibetan-buddh_b_913851.html:
Tibetan Buddhism’s Next Great Leader???
We commented on this issue yesterday at The Gurdjieff Con

http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2011/07/29/an-end-to-tibetan-political-religion/

I should ‘apologize’ for such a harsh critique, and, since I am not a Tibetan Buddhist, or a Buddhist, should stay out of such ‘vulgar’ attacks. Judge for yourself if the apology, however, doesn’t run very deep.

So let me just say that ‘buddhism’ has to have ‘buddhas’ at this point, to recreate it. Whether that can be done outside of India I don’t know, but the requirements for being a teacher are staggering, and attempting buddhism in the west is very difficult. Those difficulties are, however, obstacles that must be faced for a universal religion of the future. Do we want such a thing? I cannot answer the question, finally, but we need to at least consider/attempt such a thing as a virtual potential if only to expose the fakes/ideologies the social elites are going to put in the place of collapsing Axial Age religions.

The question of ideology suggests that a real buddhism has to be more than the instrument of a political elite as in Tibet, and return to its radical roots in the Axial Age when the buddhists were a revolutionary cadre bent on taking over India, succeeding for several centuries. In its wake, as it was driven from India the vampires of ‘Hinduism’ took over and we have the idiocies masking the read Indian tradition setting the definition of ‘normal’.
Thus we need to create a new left that can also embrace the religious radicalism of the real ancient buddhism, next to its socialist critique and revolution against capitalism.
We won’t here anything about that from the current Tibetan mafia, so, goodbye to all that.

Note: I should perhaps say ‘neo-brahminism’ rather than ‘hinduism’, the latter term being misleading. The real, and great, Indian tradition is not ‘hinduism’ in this usage.

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Don’t be intimidated by the science goons

Posted in General at 11:35 am by nemo

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/francis-collins-is-ticked-off-at-atheists/

I am no fan of Collins, but Coyne’s statement here is a bit much: the witch hunt over ‘unscientific’ beliefs focuses on just those issues that strong supporters of science should consider carefully, because they show the limits of science as known: the question of morality.
As for fine-tuning, to say that consideration of this is anti-scientific is outrageous, false, and open to debate.

I think that this kind of science fundamentalism is going to back fire among secularists (forget the Bible Belt) who will come to an intelligent realization that science as we know it has some critical difficulties.
Don’t let the science goons intimidate you into silence.

And Collins is still an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs, including the notion that the laws of physics indicate fine-tuning by a deity (the same one who freezes waterfalls in three parts), and that human morality—which he calls “The Moral Law”—can’t be explained by evolution, ergo Jesus. (I’m publishing a response to the latter idea within the next few days.)

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Industrial revolution sealed Neanderthals’ fate

Posted in Evolution at 11:27 am by nemo

Industrial revolution sealed Neanderthals’ fate

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Evolution? or Darwinism?

Posted in Evolution at 11:24 am by nemo

http://richarddawkins.net/discussions/642386-evolution-debate-in-schoolsEvolution Debate in Schools
By DON’TPANIC
Added: Saturday, 30 July 2011 at 12:08 AM
As usual ‘evolution’ probably means ‘darwinism’ here, and the need for debate is very great. Why not simple teach the fact of evolution, without the theory of natural selection. Then, indeed, the case is overwhelming.

I am a first year Biology teacher that just moved from New York to teach in an Arizona Public School. Looking at the content for the year, evolution will be taught at the end and it is my favorite subject to teach and love the challenge of
reaching out to our youth. One concern of mine is that another teacher I will be working with has proposed an activity that looks at evolution articles and have the students partake in a debate. It is my strong opinion that evolution isn’t meant to be debated. In fact I don’t see what can be debated at all as long as I provide the students with enough facts and evidences about evolution. In addition, wouldn’t a debate like this stir up religious beliefs which is illegal in public schools (thankfully). Being a new teacher to the school I don’t want to rock the boat and insist that evolution shouldn’t be debated. In all honesty I don’t know much about this other teacher and this teacher’s intentions could be pure and might just look for a way to further engage my students. I was hoping that I could receive some feedback on how I should handle this situation.

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An Orchestrated Crisis

Posted in General at 11:19 am by nemo

Will the Ceiling Fall In?
Disastrous Outcomes From an Orchestrated Crisis
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07292011.html

With the world concerned about US financial credibility and the poor outlook for the US economy, now is not the time for the Republicans to grandstand on the public debt. The debt ceiling needed to be quietly raised. Instead, the Republicans started a fire and then threw gasoline on it, creating an inferno that could burn up the US social safety net or the US Treasury’s credit rating and the US dollar’s role as reserve currency or what remains of the separation of powers.

Consequently, world financial markets, currency markets, commodity markets, central banks, and mutual fund money market and bond funds are on pins and needles.

This level of irresponsibility is seldom seen even from American politicians.

Republicans have created a totally unnecessary crisis and turned it into compelling political theater. Will the US default? Will entitlements be slashed? Will Obama seize the power of the purse from Congress in order to save the dollar and the US credit rating? None of these questions needed to arise.

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Map of Plant Protein Interactions

Posted in General at 11:05 am by nemo

Largest-Ever Map of Plant Protein InteractionsScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — An international team of scientists has described their mapping and early analyses of thousands of protein-to-protein interactions within the cells of Arabidopsis thaliana — a variety of mustard plant that is to plant biology what the lab mouse is to human biology.

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Sea Level Rise

Posted in global warming at 11:04 am by nemo

Sea Level Rise Less from Greenland, More from Antarctica, Than Expected During Last Interglacial
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2011) — During the last prolonged warm spell on Earth, the oceans were at least four meters — and possibly as much as 6.5 meters, or about 20 feet — higher than they are now.

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Is Standard and Poor’s Manipulating US Debt Rating

Posted in you've got mail at 11:01 am by nemo

Jane Hamsher: Is Standard and Poor’s Manipulating US Debt Rating to Escape Liability for the Mortgage Crisis?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/29-12

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America Unmoored

Posted in you've got mail at 11:00 am by nemo

David Dayen: America Unmoored – Elite Failure Leads to Utter Confusion

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/29-7

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